Chapter 2 The Sounds This chapter presents the speech sounds of Navajo, the syllable structure, phonological processes, and concludes with a brief discussion of the development of Navajo orthography. 1. The Sound inventory Navajo writing reflects pronunciation in a fairly straightforward way. 1.1 The Vowels Navajo vowels show a contrast for length and nasality and high and low tone, with rising and falling tones only on long vowels. The vowels occur in four basic positions: Navajo IPA /a/ ’ay¡n¶, buffalo [a] as in father /e/ ’e’e’aah, sunset [e] as in met /i/ ’i¬, branch [ɪ] as in bit /o/ ch’osh, insect [o] as in note Short vowels occur freely in any syllable: initial, medial, and word final. /a/ ’at’oh, nest gah, rabbit dooda, no /e/ ’e’e’aah, sunset dego, up din¢, man, people /i/ ’i’¶¶’£, sun has set tin, ice ni, you /o/ ‘ºlta’, school hosh, cactus tº, water Long vowels are indicated in writing with a double vowel: /aa/, /ee/, /ii/, and /oo/. The long vowel is a Navajo particular feature; therefore, we give only those examples here: Navajo IPA 4 /aa / laanaa, wishful thinking; saad, word [aa] /ee/ nts¶h¡kees, thinking; ’azee’, medicine [ee] /ii/ hastiin, man; ’atiin, road [ii] /oo/ dooda, no; tooh, body of water [oo] The long /i/ is noteworthy because it is a tense vowel, having the quality of the vowel in the English word bead, while the short /i/ is lax. Tone Navajo vowels have low or high tone. A high tone vowel is indicated by an accent mark over the vowel. The short and the long vowels may be high toned as in the following examples: Short High Tone Long High Tone /¡/ ’¡din, none /¡¡/ t’¡¡, just /¢/ k¢, shoe /¢¢/ ’¢¢’, clothing /¶/ ts¶dii, bird /¶¶/ d¶¶, this, these /º/ tº, water /ºº/ dºº, and Long vowels, written as two vowels can also have a rising or falling tone. When a low long vowel is followed by a particle that has a high tone, the second vowel becomes high, resulting in a rising tone; and when a high long vowel is followed by a particle with low tone, then the second vowel becomes low, resulting in a falling tone as exemplified here: Rising Tone Falling Tone /a¡/ ch’a¡sh, going somewhere? /¡a/ nahºº¬t£™go, after the rain /e¢/ ne¢sh hºl–, you have some? /¢e/ dein¢eyººd, theyareleading it /i¶/ ‘ºlta’di¶sh, at school? /¶i/ doo yit’ª• da, it’s invisible /oº/ h¡goºnee’, good bye /ºo/ dºola, bull (toro) Nasalization All vowels in Navajo may be nasalized: both short and long. Nasalized vowels are marked by a diacritic under the vowel: /™/, /∞/, /•/, and /–/. When a vowel is immediately preceded or followed 5 by a nasal consonant /m/, or /n/, the vowels become nasalized although they are not marked with the diacritic when written: m¡s¶/mºs¶ ‘cat’, ma’ii ‘coyote’, n¶ ‘he/she said’, naadiin ‘twenty’. The nasality of the consonant spreads onto the vowel, much in the same manner as with the English words mint, men, more, thin, think, and tin. Navajo nasalized vowels are similar to the nasalized vowels in French. Below are additional examples showing nasalization on short and long vowels: Short Vowel Long Vowel /™/ sh™’, how about /™™/ ’™™’, uh huh, yeah /∞/ dooh∞s, it will itch /∞∞/ s∞∞s, wart /•/ t•’, let’s go /••/ ’¡d••h, it is dwindling /–/ ts¢’¢d–‘ii, a fly /––/ deeds––h, it burst Syllabic N The syllabic consonant /`/ or /n/ appears in certain Navajo words like: ndaan¢ ‘they are playing’, nts¶skees ‘I’m thinking’, `t’¢¢’ ‘it was’, ndi, ‘but’, or ndaaz ‘it is heavy’. These words are sometimes written and pronounced with the vowel /i/ after the /n/: nidaan¢ ‘they are playing’, nits¶skees, n¶t’¢¢/n¶t’§§’, ‘it was’, nidaaz ‘it is heavy’. The syllabic n is like a vowel in that it can have a low or high tone and in that it can form a syllable even no vowel follows it. Diphthongs When two different vowels come together, they form a vowel cluster called diphthong. We have the Navajo diphthongs listed below: some are lengthened by their environment in the manner they cluster. /ai/ hai, winter /aii/ yiigaii, it became white; Naakaii, Spanish /aai/ sh¶naa¶, my older brother (also a variation of the two above) /ao/ daoly¢, they are called, ¶n¡¡n¡olt™’, it is tied to it also /aoo/ ‘aoo’ (‘ouu’), yes, naoosh¬¢eh doo, I will have it /ei/ s¢¶, sand /eii/ ‘eii, that, woly¢ii, one it is called /oi/ deesdoi, it is warm (weather /ooi/ ¬itsoo¶g¶¶, the yellow one 6 /ouu/ ‘ouu’, yes, it occurs only in this word Vowels: Articulatory Chart Front Central Back High i Mid e o Low a 1.2 The Consonants In the following is a list of Navajo consonants listed in the order of the English Convention and where the English equivalent is provided when possible. Their differences between the two will be discussed as necessary. NAVAJO: ENGLISH: b bis, adobe [p] as in stop ch chaha’oh, shade house [ch] as in church ch’ ch’ah, hat - d dib¢, sheep [t] as in stop dl dloh, laughter [gl], [bl] as in glow, blow dz dzi¬, mountain [dz] as in adze g gah, rabbit [k] as in skin gh Gh™™j•’, October - h, x hosh/xosh, cactus [h] as in hide hw hwiih, satiated [wh] as in white j joo¬, ball [j] as jewel k k¢, shoe [k] as in kill 7 k’ k’ad, now - kw kwe’¢, here - /’/ ’e’e’aah, sunset hiatus as in “oh oh”, “uh huh” l l¡tsin¶, bracelet [l] as in letter /¬/ as in ¬id, smoke - /m/ as in m¡s¶/mºs¶, cat [m] as in mother /n/ as in naaki, two [n] as in now /s/ as in sis, belt [s] as in sit /sh/ aa in shash, bear [sh] as in shoot /t/ as in tº, water - /t’/ as in t’eesh, charcoal - /t¬/ as in t¬ah, ointment - /t¬’/ as in t¬aaka¬, skirt - /ts/ as in tsin, tree [ts] as in cats /ts’/ as in ts’in, bone - /w/ as in wol¡ch¶¶’, red ant [w] as in wide /x, h/ as in xosh/hosh, cactus [h] as in hide /y/ as in yas, snow [y] as in yellow /z/ as in zas, snow [z] as in zoo /zh/ as in zh–’, fun thing, entertainment [zh] as in leisure English speakers tend to hear b as p, d as t, g as k, dz as ts because of their brevity and lack of aspiration. It helps to know that Navajo does not have the aspirated consonant /p/ in any form originally; however, puppy in Navajo is /pabii/ for some younger speakers. It is only a borrowed term. 8 The following chart of consonants is from Young & Morgan (1980: xxii): Consonants Bilabial Alveolo-Palatal Palato-Velar Glottal STOPS Voiceless Unaspirated b d g Aspirated k, kw Glottalized t’ k’ ’ SPIRANTS Voiced z, zh gh, Voiceless s, sh h (x), hw h LATERALS Voiced l Voiceless ¬ AFFRICATES Voiceless Unaspirated dz, j, dl Aspirated ts, ch, t¬ t (tx) Glottalized ts’, ch’, t¬’ t’ Nasal m n SEMI-VOWELS w y 2. Syllable Structure Languages differ with respect to the kinds of syllables that occur. Navajo allows syllable of the following forms, where C is a consonant and V is a vowel: (CV) ni, (CVV), ch’aa (CVC), sis, and (CVVC) naash. In Navajo a consonant may be written as a cluster of letters: /ch’/, /ts’/, /t¬’/, and /dz/ are all digraphs, two letters indicating a single speech sound. A vowel with no consonant (V) is not a possible syllable in Navajo. Some Navajo words are sometimes written with an initial vowel, but in fact these words always begin with a glottal stop; thus what appears to be a (V) syllable is actually a (CV) syllable. The glottal stop in Navajo is represented as a consonant in the consonant charts in the next section. 3. Phonological Processes 9 Words are often built of smaller meaningful parts (stems, prefixes, clitics). When these parts come in contact with one another to form a word, the consonants and vowels in these parts affect each other. The result is that the sounds change in predictable ways. A phonological process is a predictable sound change. This section presents the most important ones for Navajo. 3.1 The D-effect Navajo has a consonant mutation process that linguists call the “d-effect.” This process is evident in all Athabaskan languages, except those on the Pacific Coast (see Hoijer 1971, Howren 1971, Kari 1973, McDonough 1990, 1992). By this process, the initial consonant of the verb stem (inflected root of the verb) is altered when preceded by a /d/. A /d/ segment can appear in this position in one of two ways: one of the so-called “classifiers,” a position 9 prefix, can be a /d/; or a /d/ will appear if the position 8 subject marker is the first person dual-plural /iid-/. The examples below illustrate the d-effect, grouped by the speech sounds that are involved. The d-effect has different results depending on what sound appears immediately after /d/, and the examples are grouped accordingly. Each group of examples begins with a word that does not undergo d-effect, because no /d/ is present in them. The example in which d-effect has occurred have the segment that results from the d-effect typeset in bold.1 One class of d-effect results in an affricate-like segment: (1) d + z = dz yizzoh (yi + si + 0 + 0 + zoh) ‘S/he drew a line’ 4 7 8 9 stem yisdzoh (yi + si + 0 + d + zoh) ‘A line was drawn’ 4 7 8 9 stem s¢zoh (si + ¶ + 0 + zoh) ‘I drew a line’ 7 8 9 stem siidzoh (si + iid + 0 + zoh) ‘We drew a line’ 7 8 9 stem d + zh = j y¶zhi’ (yi + 0 + 0 + zhi’) ‘I named him/her’ 4 8 9 stem y¶iji’ (yi + iid + 0 + zhi’) ‘We named him/her’ 4 8 9 stem 1 Some additional comments: the material inside parenthesis shows what linguists take to be the basic form of each meaningful unit within the verb; the numbers indicate the position of each prefix according to YM’s (1987) verb chart.